ETEC540: Text, Technologies – Community Weblog

Text surrounds us, in many different forms and spaces. I would argue that text, as part of our language, has become the victim of improper usage and depreciated in value over the years of its transformation. Once an elegant delivery of art, as evidenced by the infamous author T.S. Elliot, has been rapidly replaced by “lol “and “l8r”, typed at warp speed by teenage and adults alike. Like Postman, I always conceptualized text as something formal, either found in textbooks or letter writing as a child, to be taken as the truth (Postman, 1992). As I grew up, I learned that text can be changed, manipulated and delivered in many different medias. My use of formal letter writing became the informal short messages of MSN. My next level of transformation took place in form of the cell phone, where we could text one another through SMS. Now, as I write this response, I have been so empowered by technology that I am texting who is available to go out for dinner tonight.

What I find most disconcerting is our current use of emoticons in these text messaging systems. Popularized by social culture, it is replacing language as a whole in order to get our feelings out. As Vosloo mentions, we are in fear of our language under assault (Vosloo, 2009, p 2). I would argue we are at war with these emoticons, trying to trample our written language of “elated with joy” into a simple representation of “:D”. These emoticons are the bane of our existence. Patterson suggests that emoticons affect the way we communicate in a written format, changing our writing style unfathomable to older generations. Our ability to construct meaningful sentences cannot give in to the visually enticing pictorial characters. In fact, I am largely curious in understanding the full extent in how these emoticons affect our way of written communication. Perhaps, should this trend of emoticons to continue, I prefer we go back into the earliest style of text, Egyptian calligraphy, to represent our true feelings.

Retrieved from:
Flickr Creative Commons. 2009. http://www.flickr.com/photos/marcopako/3220633957/

References:
Patterson, A. (2012). Digital Youth, Mobile Phones and Text Messaging: Assessing the Profound Impact of a Technological Afterthought. In Belk, R. and Llamas, R. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Digital Consumption, London: Routledge.

Postman, N. (1992). Technopoly: The surrender of culture to technology. New York: Vintage Books.

Vosloo, S. (2009). The effects of texting on literacy: Modern scourge or opportunity? In an issue paper from the Shuttleworth Foundation.

(Flickr Creative Commons 2009)

The definition of the word “text” has changed over time, as we came to learn in Module 1. It has several uses as a noun and even some uses cited by the OED as a verb. However, what the OED does not include in its definition of the word text is the word’s most common usage in today’s digital age:

Text [tekst]

verb (used without object): to send a text message: Texting while driving is an accident asking to happen.

verb (used with object):

-to send a text message  about or containing: He texted a long wish list to his parents two days before his eighteenth birthday.

-to send a text message  to: The only way I can ever reach her is to text her.

(Dictionary.com 2012)

This is what text as communication has come to mean to me and several other Net-Geners today. Texting is  becoming the primary form of communication amongst many people in this the digital age as their cell phones are no longer considered an accessory, but rather an extension of themselves and with that logic, communicating via a text is as organic as communicating by mouth. People hardly talk on their cell phones anymore. They have created a whole new language through which to communicate and it is the language of text messaging.

Here are some statistics that have piqued my interest in exploring text messaging as the focus for the Module 3 assignment (until I realized I wouldn’t be able to choose that technology since it came after the computer!)…

“Canadians sent 19.5 billion person-to-person text messages in Q3 2011.

6.7 billion person-to-person text messages were sent in September 2011 alone, which represents an average of approximately 224 million messages per day.

It’s estimated that over 8 TRILLION text messages were sent globally in 2011” (Whent 2012).

My thumbs are sore just thinking about that!

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References:

Flickr Creative Commons. 2009. “iPhone Drama!” http://www.flickr.com/photos/stunnaben/3213268006/

Dictionary.com. 2012. “Text.”

Whent, Rob. 2012. “Text Messaging – Is it the new email?” http://blogs.windsorstar.com/2012/01/10/text-messaging-is-it-the-new-email/

I chose this image of the evolution of text because at the beginning of this module, all I could think about when I heard or read the word, “text” was the image of texting on a phone. I am a frequent texter, emailer, and tweeter and I am realizing that these daily forms of communication are shaping my life in some form or another. Technology has advanced our communication and perhaps increased the frequency, but I’m not sure it has made it more meaningful.

My initial thoughts about this course thus far are that we will be looking into the history of text and technology. With a Biology background, I have been turning to the theory of evolution as I make sense of the changing text and technology over time. The most efficient and functional form of communication is prevailing through its own form of natural selection.

Alicia

Image retrieved from:
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/04/evolution-of-writing/